NASA's Global Climate Change program recently wrote a great article about the Night Rover Challenge. It leads off with the statement, "There's Never a Cloudy Day on the Moon." This is a great statement about how powerful solar energy can be in space. But what happens when the sun goes down? That's where the Night Rover steps in! Read their full article about the importance of energy storage for space applications here: http://climate.nasa.gov/energy_innovations/951
Every year the GE Focus Forward awards celebrate short films that highlight exceptional people and world-changing ideas. This year one of the finalists is the Super SuperCapacitor. The story of Ric Kaner who "set out to find a new way to make graphene, the thinnest and strongest material on earth." In his research, Ric wasn't specifically trying to invent an amazing new capacitor, but just to figure out a better method of producing the graphene, which is itself an extremely hard substance to make.
This article was forwarded to us from our friends at NASA. Apparently, researchers at Rice University and Lockheed Martin have discovered a new way to crush their silicon into a usable form for Lithium Ion Batteries. Usually Graphite is used as the anode, even though silicon could potentially store 10x more ions! This is really interesting research on the road to radically improved energy storage technology! Take a look at the full article here: http://www.gizmag.com/crushed-silicon-lithium-ion-battery/24885/